The Hindu Business Line : `More corporates turn to e-learning'

FOR induction and soft skills training, corporates are depending more on virtual universities. "And this is not just in IT companies, but in the non-IT sector too," says Mr Karthik K. S., Co-founder and Managing Director, 24x7 Learning, a Bangalore-based e-learning firm.

In the last four years, the non-IT business contribution has grown from 24 per cent to 57 per cent, he says. Apart from soft skills, e-learning also happens in the areas of sales application, product information and competitive information.

Talking about how competitive information is useful, Mr Karthik cites the example of telecom sales employees who need to know about competitive tariffs on a day-to-day basis. "E-learning is very useful here because of the speed and the reach it offers," he says. "In fact, companies now prefer rapid e-learning content."

24x7 has initiated an e-learning project in a business process outsourcing (BPO) company where agents are trained for faster typing.

"For a BPO employee who spends about 40 seconds typing, listening and talking to a customer, a saving of five seconds is very vital and that is what this course has done," explains Mr Karthik.

About 16,000 employees have been covered under this project. 24x7 has also set up an e-campus for the Kerala Government. "It's a soft skills training programme for job aspirants to make them more employable," says Mr Karthik.

The global e-learning market is worth over $15 billion. Though there are no figures available for India, the industry is seeing a growth of 20 per cent annually, according to him. "Generally, companies spend about 0.81 per cent to 0.1 per cent of their sales revenue on e-learning," says Mr Karthik.

24x7 Learning has delivered e-learning solutions to Wipro Technologies, A. V. Birla Group, Airtel, Patni Computers, Hughes Software and Touchtel.

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`More corporates turn to e-learning'